After A Touch of Sin was effectively banned, Zhangke was determined to make a film that would be released and make a bit of money. The solution was soap opera, an entire 25-year run compressed into a single film. The backdrop is as questioning and critical as ever, but in the foreground we have tales of love and disappointment. It's like Crossroads directed by Antonioni.

The narrative is divided into past, present and future. New Year in 1999 and we are introduced to a love triangle in Fenyang. Tao Zhao is effectively Mother China, having to choose between the aggressive, car-owner capitalism of mine owner Yi Zhang, and the dull, solid virtues of Jing Dong Liang who works handing out the pit helmets at his rival's mine. The three are close friends until she is pushed to make a decision between the two suitors, the ramifications of which will be felt down through the decades.

I won't reveal any more about all this pans out over the following years. It is much less didactic and straightforward than you'd expect, and the spread of the various narrative strands is wide and diffuse in a way that is impressively unpredictable, but also unfulfilling. One aspect that irritates is that whatever the time frame, the three main actors always seem to be incorrectly aged. So in the early section, it is vaguely ridiculous to have the then 38-year-old Tao Zhao (a constant presence in these films, her being the lady Jia Zhangke's calls the missus) wafting around like she the hottest young thing in the village. But then when the film shifts to a time frame closer to her own age she is still made up to look too old.

It's a film about how life gets away from you, plans and dreams slip through your fingers and the film exemplifies that frustration. There are some impressive images, touching moments but by the time it is coming to an end I think a lot of viewers will feel that the film hasn't fulfilled the youthful promise it had started out with just two hours earlier.